Hex is the first in series of crime novels by former spoken word artist Maggie Estep. The main character of Hex is Ruby Murphy a recovering alcoholic with a fanatical devotion to animals. Through a series of unfortunate events Ruby is pushed into the dirty underbelly of horse racing and now finds herself in the company of extremely bad people with guns.
Many SGers may remember Estep from her the MTV show Poetry Unplugged in the early 90s. Before the poetry boom in the media ended, there was a lot of buzz around her which she was able to parlay into a series of book deals. She has written the novel Diary of an Emotional Idiot as well as Soft Maniacs, a collection of short stories.
Her next book is the second of the Ruby Murphy stories called Gargantuan.
Check out Maggie Esteps official website
Daniel Robert Epstein: What made you decide to do a crime novel like Hex?
Maggie Estep: It was a fluke. Ive always read heaps of crime novels. Then I was working on something else and I got frustrated and bored so I started out just writing something to entertain myself and I wrote a whole chapter. Then I thought, hey this is kind of fun so I wrote a book.
Then I found that I like inflicting a certain structure upon myself because then I can show my voice and my shenanigans and I kind of love that.
DRE: Its a big difference from other things that youve written.
ME: Its a difference in that its a bit plotted but thats about it. The voice is the same in everything. I cant seem to get away from [laughs] that darn voice of mine. I was initially known for writing kind of spoken work, performance and specific pieces. I was working on novels but that got me nowhere so then I started performing a lot and so I wrote really short in-your-face kind of stuff and that is what a lot of people remember me for.
DRE: I found some info in Hex under a web page of women sleuths or something like that so thats pretty unusual.
ME: Its a little weird it doesnt quite fit into any of the existing categories entirely. I like to think mine has some things that no one would possibly replicate. I dont think you see a lot of the combination of Coney Island and the racetrack.
DRE: Did you do research for this?
ME: I grew up around horse people so it was inevitable that I would write about the damn people. A lawyer friend of mine was talking about his cases and he said oh yeah I just prosecuted this guy who was like you know whacking horses for the insurance money. It turned out to be this guy Id known growing up and that was kind of appalling so that was probably the instigating event for that book.
DRE: Did he like horses when you knew him?
ME: Yeah he worked for my dad transporting horses and stuff.
DRE: Wow that must have been kind of freaky.
ME: It was horrible. Like my dads protg. He was this really bad kid and in and out of juvie. My dad was trying to help reform him by getting him into horses and we all thought it was working. Apparently it didnt have the desired affect
DRE: Apparently not.
How did the transition to a novel like this work for you?
ME: I was working on something that I will eventually get back to. It was actually sort of a historical novel about female gangsters called the Angel Makers. Thats something Ive been researching and thinking about it for probably six years now. It was just more than I could handle at the time and Ill probably do it about two books from now
DRE: Was there a lot of female gangsters?
ME: I know there were some and there were two in particular who pop up in the book Gangs in New York. Theres not that much known about them which gives me more leeway actually. But theyre pretty fascinating because in a time when women couldnt vote or anything they were leading these vast tribes of men, murdering and causing mayhem. I love it [laughs].
DRE: Youve caused some mayhem yourself, right?
ME: Me? [laughs]
DRE: Yeah. You tried to, anyway, right?
ME: Wait when? [laughs]
DRE: In general, I mean I didnt really expect to find, you know, I put your name into a seach engine and all this really nutty stuff popped up.
ME: [laughs] Yeah theres a lot of stuff about me out there. I did all the performance stuff and then I did things like opening for Hole. Ive done all kinds of very bizarre things and then my second book, Soft Maniacs, was considered rather pornographic although that certainly wasnt really my intention it just came out that way.
DRE: Howd you get into the performance?
ME: Completely accidental because Im actually very introverted. When I was like twenty I wasnt very good at writing novels and I had some excerpts lying around. A friend saw some of it and she dragged me to an open mic night and it went really well. I was so nervous that I paced and was kind of frantic but a year later I found myself earning money performing. Not that much, like 50 bucks a shot, but it just kind of took off from there. Then I started to go on tours with other writers and for a few years there I earned a steady living just from performing not from publishing or anything
DRE: Didnt you do Lollapalooza?
ME: Yes I did. There was a summer where they had a bus full of poets and I was one of them. That was really fun. [laughs] But thats what burned me out completely on doing spoken word and performances as a steady diet because it had maybe twelve performance pieces that I was doing them all day everyday for eight weeks. I just never wanted to look at them again after that. Fortunately I had just gotten my first book deal so that was like the turning point
DRE: You were also on this MTV show that was very popular called Poetry Unplugged.
ME: The guy who created Unplugged, Bob Small, saw me perform really early on and he was really interested in my work and a few other peoples. So he talked to the powers that be into doing this Spoken Word Unplugged where it was just nothing but poets, monologue people and stuff like that. We actually did two of those and it got a tremendous amount of attention. I think thats how I actually got a book deal.
It was completely ass backwards. Once I got on TV the New York Times wrote about it and the next day I had five or six phone messages from publishers and editors asking to meet with me. It was a happy day.
DRE: All it takes is a write up in the Times.
ME: Its amazing how powerful that is.
DRE: When you do book readings do you revert back to when you did spoken word?
ME: Im a good reader but Im not showy. I know how to edit some things to make it kind of juicy for the audience. You have to make people either laugh or have some strong emotion every thirty seconds or youre screwed. I dont have those same twelve spoken word pieces so its quite delightful to do it.
DRE: Do people still throw crap at you?
ME: I dont really usually end up reading in those kinds of venues. That happened opening for rock bands. That comes with the territory [laughs].
DRE: What was it like opening for Hole?
ME: That was mostly pretty good. I had a band behind me while I was ranting so we had a good time.
We were just all friends and we used to get the other to play for fun and then we got a record deal and then were opening for Hole. It was all really unexpected. One time Courtney was indisposed and so Hole wasnt going to play and they announced to the 5,000 waiting kids that it was us and Veruca Salt or nothing at all. So we had to go first and surprisingly they were pretty receptive. That was fun but there were other times where I went on between Henry Rollins Band and Cypress Hill. That was the time that I got like mud thrown at me. That was at Woodstock II. It was like 250,000 people and I was there in my little dress Im shouting out stuff and theyre like not having it
DRE: You seem to say that you said that you fall into some of these things but I you must be fairly talented for people to pick up on stuff like this.
ME: Well when I was sixteen or whatever the age when you decide to do what you want to do is, I just wanted to write. But I didnt know exactly where I was going to go with it and then a lot of stuff just kind of fell my way. I just went with it until I got really burned out on like on rock-type venues and having to write really loud kind of splashy stuff. Its limited so after awhile I would just have to move on.
DRE: But were you a child prodigy?
ME: No, I wasnt that young. By the time stuff started happening I was twenty-seven already.
DRE: I read you were reading Camus at age ten [laughs].
ME: [laughs] Thats because I was withdrawn, introverted and living in France. I had no choice. My mom divorced when I was seven and took me there.
DRE: Are they selling Camus in the airport there?
ME: [laughs] No I was a bad kid.
DRE: You were a bad kid at age seven?
ME: Yeah, I was always in trouble for ripping boys clothes off and just being bad in school. My stepfather decided that every day after I had to go home all I was allowed to do was read. At the time I hated reading and he got me Camus, Moliere and stuff in French. I spoke a bit of French but it was the only thing I had available to me so I and thats how I ended up reading
DRE: What did reading those books do to you at such a young age?
ME: Thats a good question. Maybe Im scarred for life. No but I really think that Camus was a good influence because he writes so simply. I love that.
DRE: I want to get back to ripping boys clothes off. What is that all about?
ME: I was so aggressive. I remember there was a boy from Madagascar. His name was Beth Haun and he just had this great skin. I terrorized him, chased him into the bathroom stalls and tried to rip his pants off.
DRE: I didnt know girls like that. If I did that I would get kicked out of school for doing something like that
ME: [laughs] It was Catholic school too.
DRE: Oh my God.
ME: I know. Then eventually I went back to live with my dad when I was thirteen and then I was really wild [laughs]. I just did whatever I wanted [laughs]
DRE: Was he just busy?
ME: Yeah, he was busy. He was a horse guy and he managed barns for people most of the time. He generally didnt have enough money to have his own operation so he would kind of manage other peoples barns and train their horses. At the working class level of it, its just unbelievable grunt work. I mean youre just working, and working and working. I had my share of chores and stuff but the rest of the time I was playing guitars, smoking pot and listening to Patty Smith [laughs].
DRE: Did you get into harder drugs too?
ME: Yeah, for a while I was a maniac. I got into anything available until like my early twenties and then it I almost killed myself like five to ten times by accidentally ODing. I had this friend who used to have to revive me all the time and finally one day she said fuck this Im leaving. Then after a various series of circumstances I found myself in rehab [laughs].
DRE: So this past year has been big for your career.
ME: Yeah it is sort of new and I wouldnt trade it for anything. I think Im pretty much where Id hoped to be, providing I still keep getting book deals and I wont have to get a day job. I dont get huge advances but I get enough that if Im slightly careful I can get by.
DRE: Do your books do okay?
ME: Each one does a little better than the previous one like and Hex definitely outsold all the others combined. It went pretty quickly which still isnt saying that much but it generated enough interest. So since it is a series Im doing at least three of them and the next one is coming out in like May or June
DRE: What other modern crime writers do you like?
ME: Well, I love Andrew Vachss. Hes amazing. Walter Mosely is great
The first stuff I read was actually like Jim Thompson. Patricia Highsmith is flawless. Both her and Jim Thompson are so fuckin dark and scary that I just get disturbed for weeks. I cant read them anymore, as much as I love them. Raymond Chandler I can handle with all those quips and that amazing dialog. But Jim Thompson I just havent read them in a couple of years because I get freaked out.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Many SGers may remember Estep from her the MTV show Poetry Unplugged in the early 90s. Before the poetry boom in the media ended, there was a lot of buzz around her which she was able to parlay into a series of book deals. She has written the novel Diary of an Emotional Idiot as well as Soft Maniacs, a collection of short stories.
Her next book is the second of the Ruby Murphy stories called Gargantuan.
Check out Maggie Esteps official website
Daniel Robert Epstein: What made you decide to do a crime novel like Hex?
Maggie Estep: It was a fluke. Ive always read heaps of crime novels. Then I was working on something else and I got frustrated and bored so I started out just writing something to entertain myself and I wrote a whole chapter. Then I thought, hey this is kind of fun so I wrote a book.
Then I found that I like inflicting a certain structure upon myself because then I can show my voice and my shenanigans and I kind of love that.
DRE: Its a big difference from other things that youve written.
ME: Its a difference in that its a bit plotted but thats about it. The voice is the same in everything. I cant seem to get away from [laughs] that darn voice of mine. I was initially known for writing kind of spoken work, performance and specific pieces. I was working on novels but that got me nowhere so then I started performing a lot and so I wrote really short in-your-face kind of stuff and that is what a lot of people remember me for.
DRE: I found some info in Hex under a web page of women sleuths or something like that so thats pretty unusual.
ME: Its a little weird it doesnt quite fit into any of the existing categories entirely. I like to think mine has some things that no one would possibly replicate. I dont think you see a lot of the combination of Coney Island and the racetrack.
DRE: Did you do research for this?
ME: I grew up around horse people so it was inevitable that I would write about the damn people. A lawyer friend of mine was talking about his cases and he said oh yeah I just prosecuted this guy who was like you know whacking horses for the insurance money. It turned out to be this guy Id known growing up and that was kind of appalling so that was probably the instigating event for that book.
DRE: Did he like horses when you knew him?
ME: Yeah he worked for my dad transporting horses and stuff.
DRE: Wow that must have been kind of freaky.
ME: It was horrible. Like my dads protg. He was this really bad kid and in and out of juvie. My dad was trying to help reform him by getting him into horses and we all thought it was working. Apparently it didnt have the desired affect
DRE: Apparently not.
How did the transition to a novel like this work for you?
ME: I was working on something that I will eventually get back to. It was actually sort of a historical novel about female gangsters called the Angel Makers. Thats something Ive been researching and thinking about it for probably six years now. It was just more than I could handle at the time and Ill probably do it about two books from now
DRE: Was there a lot of female gangsters?
ME: I know there were some and there were two in particular who pop up in the book Gangs in New York. Theres not that much known about them which gives me more leeway actually. But theyre pretty fascinating because in a time when women couldnt vote or anything they were leading these vast tribes of men, murdering and causing mayhem. I love it [laughs].
DRE: Youve caused some mayhem yourself, right?
ME: Me? [laughs]
DRE: Yeah. You tried to, anyway, right?
ME: Wait when? [laughs]
DRE: In general, I mean I didnt really expect to find, you know, I put your name into a seach engine and all this really nutty stuff popped up.
ME: [laughs] Yeah theres a lot of stuff about me out there. I did all the performance stuff and then I did things like opening for Hole. Ive done all kinds of very bizarre things and then my second book, Soft Maniacs, was considered rather pornographic although that certainly wasnt really my intention it just came out that way.
DRE: Howd you get into the performance?
ME: Completely accidental because Im actually very introverted. When I was like twenty I wasnt very good at writing novels and I had some excerpts lying around. A friend saw some of it and she dragged me to an open mic night and it went really well. I was so nervous that I paced and was kind of frantic but a year later I found myself earning money performing. Not that much, like 50 bucks a shot, but it just kind of took off from there. Then I started to go on tours with other writers and for a few years there I earned a steady living just from performing not from publishing or anything
DRE: Didnt you do Lollapalooza?
ME: Yes I did. There was a summer where they had a bus full of poets and I was one of them. That was really fun. [laughs] But thats what burned me out completely on doing spoken word and performances as a steady diet because it had maybe twelve performance pieces that I was doing them all day everyday for eight weeks. I just never wanted to look at them again after that. Fortunately I had just gotten my first book deal so that was like the turning point
DRE: You were also on this MTV show that was very popular called Poetry Unplugged.
ME: The guy who created Unplugged, Bob Small, saw me perform really early on and he was really interested in my work and a few other peoples. So he talked to the powers that be into doing this Spoken Word Unplugged where it was just nothing but poets, monologue people and stuff like that. We actually did two of those and it got a tremendous amount of attention. I think thats how I actually got a book deal.
It was completely ass backwards. Once I got on TV the New York Times wrote about it and the next day I had five or six phone messages from publishers and editors asking to meet with me. It was a happy day.
DRE: All it takes is a write up in the Times.
ME: Its amazing how powerful that is.
DRE: When you do book readings do you revert back to when you did spoken word?
ME: Im a good reader but Im not showy. I know how to edit some things to make it kind of juicy for the audience. You have to make people either laugh or have some strong emotion every thirty seconds or youre screwed. I dont have those same twelve spoken word pieces so its quite delightful to do it.
DRE: Do people still throw crap at you?
ME: I dont really usually end up reading in those kinds of venues. That happened opening for rock bands. That comes with the territory [laughs].
DRE: What was it like opening for Hole?
ME: That was mostly pretty good. I had a band behind me while I was ranting so we had a good time.
We were just all friends and we used to get the other to play for fun and then we got a record deal and then were opening for Hole. It was all really unexpected. One time Courtney was indisposed and so Hole wasnt going to play and they announced to the 5,000 waiting kids that it was us and Veruca Salt or nothing at all. So we had to go first and surprisingly they were pretty receptive. That was fun but there were other times where I went on between Henry Rollins Band and Cypress Hill. That was the time that I got like mud thrown at me. That was at Woodstock II. It was like 250,000 people and I was there in my little dress Im shouting out stuff and theyre like not having it
DRE: You seem to say that you said that you fall into some of these things but I you must be fairly talented for people to pick up on stuff like this.
ME: Well when I was sixteen or whatever the age when you decide to do what you want to do is, I just wanted to write. But I didnt know exactly where I was going to go with it and then a lot of stuff just kind of fell my way. I just went with it until I got really burned out on like on rock-type venues and having to write really loud kind of splashy stuff. Its limited so after awhile I would just have to move on.
DRE: But were you a child prodigy?
ME: No, I wasnt that young. By the time stuff started happening I was twenty-seven already.
DRE: I read you were reading Camus at age ten [laughs].
ME: [laughs] Thats because I was withdrawn, introverted and living in France. I had no choice. My mom divorced when I was seven and took me there.
DRE: Are they selling Camus in the airport there?
ME: [laughs] No I was a bad kid.
DRE: You were a bad kid at age seven?
ME: Yeah, I was always in trouble for ripping boys clothes off and just being bad in school. My stepfather decided that every day after I had to go home all I was allowed to do was read. At the time I hated reading and he got me Camus, Moliere and stuff in French. I spoke a bit of French but it was the only thing I had available to me so I and thats how I ended up reading
DRE: What did reading those books do to you at such a young age?
ME: Thats a good question. Maybe Im scarred for life. No but I really think that Camus was a good influence because he writes so simply. I love that.
DRE: I want to get back to ripping boys clothes off. What is that all about?
ME: I was so aggressive. I remember there was a boy from Madagascar. His name was Beth Haun and he just had this great skin. I terrorized him, chased him into the bathroom stalls and tried to rip his pants off.
DRE: I didnt know girls like that. If I did that I would get kicked out of school for doing something like that
ME: [laughs] It was Catholic school too.
DRE: Oh my God.
ME: I know. Then eventually I went back to live with my dad when I was thirteen and then I was really wild [laughs]. I just did whatever I wanted [laughs]
DRE: Was he just busy?
ME: Yeah, he was busy. He was a horse guy and he managed barns for people most of the time. He generally didnt have enough money to have his own operation so he would kind of manage other peoples barns and train their horses. At the working class level of it, its just unbelievable grunt work. I mean youre just working, and working and working. I had my share of chores and stuff but the rest of the time I was playing guitars, smoking pot and listening to Patty Smith [laughs].
DRE: Did you get into harder drugs too?
ME: Yeah, for a while I was a maniac. I got into anything available until like my early twenties and then it I almost killed myself like five to ten times by accidentally ODing. I had this friend who used to have to revive me all the time and finally one day she said fuck this Im leaving. Then after a various series of circumstances I found myself in rehab [laughs].
DRE: So this past year has been big for your career.
ME: Yeah it is sort of new and I wouldnt trade it for anything. I think Im pretty much where Id hoped to be, providing I still keep getting book deals and I wont have to get a day job. I dont get huge advances but I get enough that if Im slightly careful I can get by.
DRE: Do your books do okay?
ME: Each one does a little better than the previous one like and Hex definitely outsold all the others combined. It went pretty quickly which still isnt saying that much but it generated enough interest. So since it is a series Im doing at least three of them and the next one is coming out in like May or June
DRE: What other modern crime writers do you like?
ME: Well, I love Andrew Vachss. Hes amazing. Walter Mosely is great
The first stuff I read was actually like Jim Thompson. Patricia Highsmith is flawless. Both her and Jim Thompson are so fuckin dark and scary that I just get disturbed for weeks. I cant read them anymore, as much as I love them. Raymond Chandler I can handle with all those quips and that amazing dialog. But Jim Thompson I just havent read them in a couple of years because I get freaked out.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
scylla:
What a great interview. I love Maggie's spoken word; perhaps I'll check this out. Oooooh.
twwly:
God, please. Let her publish another book soon.